Chapter LXX: All's Well!

"Gracie, dear!" said Jim, "will you make me the happiest man in all the world? I've hungered and thirsted for you all these months, and I believe old Jack would wish it so if he knew."

"Oh, Jim"--and she put up her arms and drew down his head, and kissed him with a little sob--"if you had both come back, it would have killed me to part you; but truly, truly, my love, I love you with all my heart."

"God bless you, dear! I will do my best to make you happy."

"I'm as happy as I can be, Jim; but perhaps if you gave me another kiss----"

So that great matter settled itself in the great settlement, an there is little more to tell.

Sir George insisted on the Greskis coming out to Knoyle for a time, until he should find some suitable opening for Louis. Nothing was too good for such friends-in-need [t?] their recovered Jim, and they all delighted in Mme Greski's fine foreign manners and the lively Tatia's exuberant joy after their deliverance from Russia.

Lord Deseret came down from London to the wedding, and brought with him two magnificent presents--diamonds from himself, which must have represented an unusually good night's winnings at the green board, and a wonderful rope of pearls from Mme Beteta, at which Gracie was inclined at first to look askance, though her eyes could not help shining at sight of them.

"You may take them without any qualms, my dear," said Lord Deseret. "It is possible that you owe your husband to madame"--and he may have added, to himself, "in more senses than one."

"Why? How is that?" asked Gracie quickly.

"Madame is now the morganatic wife of one of the Russian Grand Dukes, and I have every reason to believe that it was due to urgent representations on her part, some time before she consented to marry him, that our two boys were not allowed out of Sebastopol. She thought they would be safer inside, and I have no doubt she was right. The chance inside were about ten to one in their favour, I should say."

"Then, indeed, I thank her," said Gracie heartily; "though old Jim does look so glum at having been cotton-woolled like that. But I don't quite understand why the lady put herself about so much on their account."

And that was one of the things she never did understand.

Lord Deseret waived the question lightly with:

"Woman's whims are past all understanding, my dear. Perhaps she fell in love with Jim, as the rest of us did."

"Why, she was old enough to be his mother," said Gracie, with little idea how near she may have come to the truth.

"You understand, I suppose?" he said to Jim that night, as they sat smoking together.

And Jim nodded soberly.

"When did she marry?" he asked presently.

"Last March. Your father was kilted in January."

"And Kattie is still with her?"

"Still with her, and going to make as fine a dancer as she is pretty a girl. You did well for her when you placed her in the Beteta's hands, my boy."

"Poor little Kattie!" said Jim. "I'm glad she came to me that night."

And here this chronicle may end. The more one ponders this strange and complex coil of life, with its broken hopes and unexplained mysteries, its short-cut strands and long-spun ropes, the more one draws to simple hope and trust in the Higher Powers. The knots and tangles twisted by man's ill doing defy at times all human efforts at their straightening. In face of such, the utmost that a man may do is to bear himself bravely, to do his duty to God and his neighbour, and leave the issue in the hands of a higher understanding than his own.

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